The Final Outbreak

by M. L. Banner

  Sal picked up the radio and studied it, like it was some sort of puzzle box he wasn’t sure how to open.

  This often happened after his explosion of anger. He’d almost get delirious with anger and then confused afterwards.

  “Why?” Sal paused, as if he wasn’t sure what words to add to the end of the sentence. Though Tomas was pretty sure what the question was: “Why don’t... they answer?”

  This is where Tomas had to be extra careful.

  He’d seen this very thing happen with the other agent, maybe two days after the barge crashed into their island. Sal went on an anger bender, smashing a car with a cricket bat, all because he couldn’t find the keys, which it turned out he left in his desk in the station.

  After ten minutes of Sal assaulting the car with the cricket bat, the other agent, went inside, grabbed Sal’s keys and came back out to offer them to him. When Sal stopped his tirade and just stared blankly at the car for an untold amount of time, he finally said, “I wonder where I put my keys.”

  The other agent said, “I’ve got ‘em right here, sir,” jingling them like a trophy.

  Sal looked at the keys and then the agent, and then proceeded to beat him to death with the cricket bat.

  Tomas and the others in town knew then that Salvadore Calderon had become mentally unstable and a psychopath.

  From this incident and other people’s trial and error, Tomas learned to give an answer that sounded logical, but wasn’t complete either. The combination seemed to force Sal to think more about it. This, for some reason, reconnected his logical thoughts and brought him back to someone Tomas could deal with.

  Sal had sent in two teams so far. Team A was supposed to go to the bridge, blow the door, and take the captain hostage for later torture. Team B was to blow the ship’s engine—Tomas never told Sal that there were two engines—and thus disable the ship, so it would have to remain at their dock permanently. Then they’d take over the ship and take its food, as they wanted.

  Neither team had reported on their radios, which they were supposed to do after they blew their explosives and completed their missions. They heard one explosion. But nothing since.

  “Maybe,” Tomas offered, “the teams are trying to be quiet and not alert the Intrepid’s people as to where they are.”

  Sal stood almost completely unmoving, other than his breaths. Then he turned to Tomas and said, “Okay, it’s time to send in Team Z now!”

  At first, Tomas thought maybe Sal wanted him to take his radio back and call in the order, but then Sal did this himself. “Team C, send in Team Z. Make sure they have taken down the ship before entering.”

  This part was disheartening, even though Tomas knew where this was going. Tomas somehow hoped he was wrong about Sal, even though he knew better.

  It was just that, as insane as this man was, he still in a sick way cared for him like a father. And he knew that Sal cared for Tomas like a son. It was the real reason why Tomas had, in fact, never been seriously threatened by Sal. Even though Sal did threaten him with death or dismemberment, and did so to so many others, Tomas never really believed it.

  He went along with Sal all this time, always hoping that he wasn’t really going to kill all these people. But when he called for Team Z, as in the last group from A to Z: the final solution, Tomas knew the die was cast. There was no going back.

  As he listened, three of Sal’s four men who were Team C, opened the doors of the three shipping containers—hidden in plain sight, behind them on the dock. Then the fourth member of Team C blasted a horn on the other end of the dock. That was the signal.

  The mob of people, some thirty men and woman, stampeded out of the three shipping containers and raced down the dock with one intent: kill everyone on the Intrepid.

  Tomas saw them race by the little building they were in, yelling their battle cry, and Tomas lowered his head.

  He couldn’t do anything about this, but he could do something about his boss. He knew right then what he would do next, and when.

  “Come on, my son. It’s time for the last part of my plan. You and I are up.”

  110

  Flavio

  At first, Flavio pointed his rifle up the stairs, but then he second-guessed himself: if there were hundreds of parasitics pouring down the stairs, he didn’t have enough ammo. He spun around, looking for a way out, and saw only the starboard gangway area was open; he’d have to get the door closed... They were already here. He spun back, flicked his rifle to full auto and readied himself. Their feet were visible in between the steps and then he saw them, when they hit the mid-deck landing.

  He clicked the safety back on.

  It was just a bunch of scared people. That’s all.

  He recognized the leader of the group as Jaga, who recognized him as well.

  “They’re coming.” Jaga jumped the last step, then moved to his left. “The crazies are above us.” Jaga was headed down to deck 1 next.

  Flavio had an idea.

  “No. Go there.” He pointed to the starboard gangway area. “Slide interior door closed and be quiet. Go now!”

  Flavio didn’t even wait for them, he sprinted to the port-side interior door, which led to the exit his security had secured. Before pounding on it, he eyeballed the fresh blood streak leading inside and wondered if they were all right. “It’s Flavio Petrovich... Ah, Second Officer Petrovich. You there?”

  Flavio could hear the rumble above, coming down the stairs, while the dozen or so friends of Jaga were making their way to the starboard exit area, albeit much too slowly.

  The door slid open. “Hello, sir,” said Violet Johansson.

  He wanted to ask them about the blood streak, but there was no time. “Open interior wall and hide. Then when I tell you, open exit door.”

  “But the islanders... They’re on the other side.” Johansson shot him a look of curious fear.

  Flavio could hear them pounding on the other side of the metal hatch. This made his plan even better.

  “Trust me. This work for everybody. Open exactly when I say, but everyone must hide now or you die.”

  She nodded.

  He took a few steps toward the starboard exit, just outside the port-side hallway. Doing a quick check, he could see Jaga’s group was having difficulty sliding the interior wall closed. As he laid his rifle down, he looked back to the port side. They were pushing their wall open, but not fast enough. “Hurry!” he yelled to both sides.

  Above, he heard a collection of animalistic grunts and fervent barks and the shuffling of a multitude of feet. They were close and moving fast.

  Flavio needed to get ready.

  He lowered his pack and withdrew an air-horn. He thought he might have a need for this and was right.

  They were right above him now.

  Johansson had the port side ready. They were hidden and Flavio could see her hand on the control pad button that would open the hatch. The pounding from the other side seemed to get louder.

  When he looked starboard, he was shocked to see their wall was still half open, with Jaga and another tugging, until one lost his footing and fell to the floor.

  They were sitting ducks.

  He stabbed the switch on the compressed air can with this thumb, sending it through the horn, causing it to emit a horrendously loud blare. Then he released his thumb. “Come and get some fine Romanian meat,” Flavio yelled.

  The stampede swung into his view, but stopped at the mid-deck landing. A horde of parasitics filled the stairs leading up and out of sight. In front of the horde was Ágúst Helguson, his pale face highlighted by a ring of red around his mouth. Helguson glanced at Flavio, who just glared back at him. Helguson turned to his right and saw all the people trying to hide in the semi-open area.

  The horde of parasitics behind him were like an enormous pack of mad pit-bulls, snarling their anticipation at taking a bite out of a neighbor that’d been bothering them. All appeared to be held back by Helguson, as if they were waiting for his com
mand.

  Jaga and his people were easy pickings and so was Flavio, but he was just one person. The target was obvious.

  Helguson turned back to Flavio, a grin slowly formed on his red-rimmed mug. He then abruptly pointed at Flavio and barked like a seal.

  That was his cue.

  Flavio had a long piece of duct tape fastened to the side of the airhorn. He pulled one side of the duct tape across the top and fastened it to the other side so that it put pressure on the button. The air-horn blared again while Flavio bolted to the port-side exit. “Now. Open door!” he hollered at the top of his lungs.

  Johansson must have heard him because the port-side gangway exit slid open, revealing a mob of people, who all looked crazed themselves.

  Flavio ran right at them holding his blaring airhorn up—the condensed air canister was cold as ice now.

  The mob held at the door, even though they had easy access, apparently completely thrown off by Flavio’s actions and the loud horn. Then they saw the hordes of parasitics flooding their way.

  Flavio tossed the airhorn over the mob, past the gangway and onto the dock, where it bounced once before coming to rest, still blaring its call to all parasitics. Flavio leapt toward the mob, which had already course-corrected and was running the other way, no doubt because of the horde less than two seconds behind them.

  Flavio felt a little like a gymnast as he nailed his jump, sailed above the gangway bridge railing and disappeared over the side of the boat, out of sight. While soaring, he reached back and just barely snagged the protective netting used to keep passengers from falling overboard. He clanged hard against the side of their ship, just above the water line.

  111

  TJ

  The bullet had sliced through her cheek and scratched her cheekbone, but she didn’t even feel it. She only knew it and reacted.

  What happened next required no calculation; it was entirely impulse that moved TJ to spin on a heel and fling herself around.

  The second bullet went way wide.

  The smiling man attempted to correct on his third shot, while he squeezed the trigger, but she was much quicker, with her left wrist blocking his gun away and her right hand simultaneously slicing with her borrowed Morakniv—she didn’t even remember unsheathing it—connecting a blood line from the man’s cheek, down his neck and ending at his chest. In a blur, the knife was pushed back the other way and buried deep into the exposed side of the man.

  As he tumbled to the floor, something inside TJ snapped. A stream of blood sprang from her cheek, rolled down her neck and covered her shoulder, but she still didn’t feel her injury.

  At that moment, she had clarity of purpose. Her anger past the boiling point, but there was so much more to it than anger. She had only one thing that mattered at that moment and nothing in this world could dissuade her: she was going to murder the other four men.

  As if she stepped away from her conscious self, no longer an active participant in what happened next, she sliced and punched and kicked and bit at these men. As much as she was insane with madness, she was also filled with a strange calmness that warmed her whole body like an internal radiator.

  Stoking this fire was an unquenchable hunger that wanted it all. Until this moment, she had tried so hard to repress this desire, but she gave into it now. And even though she could smell and taste that some of these men were infected like her, she didn’t care. She indulged in their warm blood and the gore, as she ripped and tore and at one point, dismembered her enemies.

  In barely the time it took to pull in a breath, there was only one standing: the one she first ran into. His whimpering cries sounded like a call to her and she wanted him even more because of it. Clutching his broken chest and limping slowly on a shattered leg, he didn’t get far, tripping toward the floor. She bolted so fast to him, she caught him before he hit the floor, while at the same time, slicing her knife across his neck in one fluid motion, severing his carotid and most of his windpipe. It was better treatment than he deserved.

  She held his shuddering body, his brown eyes fading and artery spurting a fountain of blood onto her face and into her mouth.

  Ohhh, the taste.

  She saw two more appear, while she licked her lips and drank down some of the man’s life. She let him drop to the floor, while fixing her sights on these two, who looked familiar.

  One called to her, as if to taunt her.

  She’d take the bait.

  ~~~

  When Ted heard the gun shot, knowing that his wife TJ was coming to the bridge, he was worried. With Wasano carrying his rifle behind him, Ted pushed open the door just as a blood-soaked TJ removed herself from a body in front of them, to race starboard down a hall to attack another.

  Her speed was mesmerizing, grabbing the man before he fell from his nasty compound fracture. But it wasn’t to save him. It was to drain the life out of him.

  He watched her in disgust, as she sliced open the man’s neck and even gulped at the spray of his blood.

  Ted couldn’t believe this was his wife. She looked like a wild animal who wore a coat of other people’s blood.

  It was even more eerie when she fixed her wild eyes on them.

  “TJ, can you hear me? TJ, it’s all right, honey.”

  Her eyes blinked from Wasano to Ted, to Wasano and back. Then she was focused on just Ted.

  She looked like she might attack him.

  Ted felt movement beside him and saw that Wasano was a foot away, lifting his rifle and pointing it directly at her.

  She let the dead man drop at her feet, his blood coating her face, rivulets of red ran off her chin. Her mouth dropped open, as if she were about to say something. Her red eyes glared like two bullet-points, focused by the whites of her sclera, both drilling into him like a target. This was no longer his wife.

  Wasano flipped off the safety. She darted forward. Wasano fired.

  112

  Eloise

  Freedom was the simple goal she had had for her people and they had just achieved this now that they had broken out of their confined area. And in their pre-programmed exuberance to follow sound, her people had gone even farther, or Ágúst had led them farther.

  Eloise was the last of her people to leave the ship. All the others had unwittingly followed the loud horn-noise, leading them off the ship to another group of humans. She had wanted them to leave the ship anyway, but only after they had killed and fed on the crew. Finding the island was just a bonus. Being on a large island would mean greater opportunities for feeding, where all their feeding opportunities were very limited on this ship.

  As she approached the port-side gangway, she couldn’t help but revel in what she saw before her.

  Even the heavens above grew angrier by the minute. A clattering echo of thunder warned the world below—her world now—of the next stage of their continuing wrath.

  The dock below was filled with her people, now ravaging the humans outside, after having escaped from their human captors on this ship. This island was now their island.

  Standing at the edge of the gangway, she felt a sense of pride in her people.

  But something is wrong, she thought.

  The smells were wrong.

  Beyond the gangway bridge, she noticed maybe twenty-five or more who weren’t her people out on the dock, but they didn’t smell like humans. In fact she couldn’t smell any humans outside now, when she had approached this exit. Not one human. And she should be able to smell many humans, even in the distance, if this island were big.

  The falling rain made it more difficult for her to catch the scent of humans.

  And then she did.

  Just then she got a whiff of strong human scents, but they weren’t coming from outside.

  She spun around to face the ship’s interior and sniffed again. The human scents are here, in this room, she thought.

  Her head snapped back to take in the air from this direct area, now catching more of it. There was more than one in here, but sh
e couldn’t see them. She screwed her eyes to any detail that would point her to them. Then she saw the human blood—she could smell this as well. A trail of red that began at the stairwell landing, stretched through the hallway, through this area and then led to a curtain on her right. Just then the curtain moved.

  Knowing they were there, she should be able to hear them, hiding behind there. As if they could hide from me, she boasted to herself. But with the loud noises outside, she couldn’t hear anything in this room. When her surroundings were quiet, she could hear their heartbeats.

  But she did hear something and spun to her left. There she saw a human’s hands clinging to the ship, just outside the opening. And another one, hiding just inside the door, behind the controls for the door.

  Then she knew.

  This was a trap.

  And where was Ágúst? He should be here, with her. She selected him and told him what to do after he had become. She gave herself to him. She rarely did that when she was a mere human.

  She turned back to her people, who weren’t as enraged as before, because the horn-noise had stopped. They had ceased fighting with the others from the island, because they were all of the same kind.

  But Ágúst was not anywhere to be seen.

  She called out for him, bellowing a long, guttural grunt.

  Her people and the island people looked up at her and regarded her cries.

  Then she heard him. Ágúst was not outside with her people; he was still inside.

  ~~~

  Ágúst couldn’t explain any of it, but he knew this was right.

  He had pointed them in the direction of the trap, sensing what the human called Flavio was trying to do. He was trying to lead them off the ship, even though Eloise’s instructions were for them to take over the ship and kill the rest of the humans. But he couldn’t let that happen.

  Ágúst had thought he had lost his human self when he had consumed their flesh and gave himself to her. But when they had broken free and he was leading their people, killing anyone and everyone that was in their way, he understood that he still had a choice. And he chose his humanity, even though so little of it remained.